1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of computer systems and more particularly to user interfaces for computer systems and to methods and apparatuses for implementing user interfaces for organizing information in a computer system.
2. Prior Art
Prior art computer systems for organizing information typically fall into two types of filing systems. These filing systems are often implemented as part of the operating system of the computer system and are therefore provided as a basic utility to the user of the system to allow the user to organize information in a manner desired by the user. The two types of systems referred to above are the flat file system and the hierarchical file system.
In the flat file system, the computer stores all files (e.g. documents) at one level of hierarchy such that the user when examining these files sees all files at this level. In other words, the system does not discriminate between files which the user may have put in a folder or a subdirectory and files which are not in folders or subdirectories. This type of flat filing system is similar to a desk where all documents on the desk are spread out with none in any folders or other containers. Clearly, such a filing system becomes cumbersome when the number of documents becomes large. For example, if the user is searching for a particular document on the system, the user may have to search through a long list of documents in order to find the desired document.
Hierarchical filing systems on computers attempt to improve filing systems by providing a hierarchy of folders or subdirectories into which the user may store information, such as text documents. Examples of hierarchical filing systems are well known in the prior art, including a hierarchical filing system disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,945,475. In these hierarchical filing systems, the user will file a document into a folder which may itself be within another folder. Looking for any documents within a first folder will require opening the first folder after opening the second folder which contains the first folder. In this manner, the user is not presented with a bewildering number of documents as in the flat filing system and the user's files are maintained in an orderly and systematic way within the hierarchy specified by the user. An example of this hierarchical filing is shown in FIG. 2 of the U.S. Pat. No. 4,945,475 wherein documents 21 and 22 are within folder 20 which itself is within folder 18 which is also stored in another folder, folder 17. Thus, in order to view documents 21 and 22 the user must direct the computer system to examine the contents of the subdirectory represented by folder 20 by specifying the full address of folder 20 (in the case of a non-graphical user interface) or by opening the series of folders necessary to obtain a view of the folder containing the desired documents (in the case of a graphical user interface). Current versions of the Finder on the Macintosh computer systems from Apple Computer are examples of hierarchical filing systems with graphical user interfaces, and other such filing systems with graphical user interfaces are well known.
While these hierarchical filing systems allow the user to specify a structure within which to file (and hence store) information in order to avoid the clutter of a flat filing system, the hierarchical structure forces the computer user to be as organized as possible in filing information. If the user, as is often the case, has difficulty in filing documents because of the difficulty in deciding the proper categories of the document (e.g. the document does not clearly apply to any current category of filing where the category is implemented by having a folder or subdirectory for the category) then the user is typically most comfortable allowing the document to appear in the upper most directory of the hierarchy. As more and more documents which are stored in the computer system memory are left in the highest directory due to the difficulty in filing those documents, the user begins to have a bewildering clutter of documents in that highest directory, which then makes the system act as if it were a flat filing system (at least to the extent of the highest directory or to some other directory/subdirectory where the user is placing documents which are difficult to file away). It should be also noted that the difficulty in filing documents in a computer system also affects the way the user interacts with the computer in that the user attempts to avoid the difficult work involved in filing a document which is hard to categorize. This leads to procrastination or avoidance of the task. This tends to result in the computer becoming cluttered with documents which are hard to categorize or otherwise file or the user does not attempt to place the documents on the computer system at all because of the realization that they will be difficult to organize. This effect tends to negate the advantages of a filing system having a graphical user interface, and particularly a hierarchical filing system with a graphical user interface.
The problems discussed above are particularly troublesome in the case of mail documents (e.g. electronic mail documents) which have not been read by the user or have only been glanced at. By their nature, these documents are most difficult to categorize and file away because the user is not fully familiar with these documents. It will be appreciated that the computer user is responsible for appropriately filing all items; the system offers little assistance in this often tedious task.
The prior art has not provided solutions to deal with these problems. For example, Malone has studied the way people work in their physical offices and has noted the significance of piles of documents in these physical offices, and has discussed the implications for the design of electronic office information systems which might use conventional office management tools, such as piles, in a computer based information system. See, Malone, T. W., How do people organize their desks? Implications for the design of office information systems, ACM Transactions on Office Information Systems, Volume 1, Number 1, January 1983, Pages 99-112. Malone however does not describe how such a computer system would be implemented nor the graphical user interface involved in dealing with such piles or browsing such piles and other activities relating to these piles.
The present invention provides an improved filing system with a graphical user interface which allows users to organize information into piles or collections of documents and assists the user in organizing these collections of documents.